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Mr. Atkinson: I support it and, indeed, should like more relay stations to be built. However, economic reality dictates that that will not happen. It would cost enormous sums to get the next 120 transmitters operating, and entails the need to re-engineer hundreds more small relay stations serving a few people--which, because of spectrum problems, may not even be physically possible. I do not understand the nature of those problems, but have been told that they exist. I agree that there should be more conversions, but, for 5 per cent., they will not happen.
The problem has become more acute since the launch of ITV 2, and since ITV has done a deal for exclusive pay-per-view coverage of the Champions league football matches. For the first time ever, in some cases, those games will be shown on ITV 2. Therefore, even if viewers are prepared to pay to watch the matches, they will not be able to do so unless they are able to receive ITV 2 terrestrial transmissions. I think that that is wrong, and that, in denying people the opportunity of watching what they want, we are crossing a rubicon.
Mr. Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston):
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk (Dr. Turner) on initiating the debate, and on pursuing the interests of his constituents with such vigour. My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, South (Mr. Chapman), too, has been working extremely hard in addressing the issue in the Wirral area.
The Wirral peninsula has a steep escarpment dipping down to the Dee valley. Consequently, many households are able to receive only television signals from Wales and from Wolverhampton. The accents in both those areas are somewhat foreign to the good folk of the Wirral peninsula. I therefore found myself agreeing with the intervention made by the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis). Although I perfectly respect and welcome the right to Welsh language broadcasting,it is a problem when it is being broadcast--under broadcasters' supposed public service obligations--to those who speak only English.
Mr. Rowlands:
I appreciate my hon. Friend's point. However, as an ex-head boy of Wirral grammar school, I think that the two cultures should be able to get together.
Mr. Miller:
I very much take that point. I certainly do not criticise spreading the Welsh culture--I welcome it; and there is a great deal of cross-fertilisation--but there is a huge language barrier. Broadcasting in another language is not an adequate response to broadcasters' public service obligations.
Moreover, it is inadequate to say that my constituents' regional needs are being met because they are able to receive regional television from Wolverhampton. There are plenty of examples--including the very good one of the village in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk--demonstrating that regional broadcasting is an important public service that cannot be provided either in another language or from a great distance.
The digital revolution gives us the opportunity to address those issues. However, if it is to do so, great flexibility, which broadcasters have not demonstrated in the analogue phase, will be required. They have always argued that there are problems with spectrum and difficulties with costs, but, technically, it is not an insoluble problem.
I invite my hon. Friend the Minister to get together with her ministerial colleagues in other Departments to try to find a solution. It is absurd that spectrum allocation is not the responsibility of one authority, and that it reflects historical rather than future requirements. For example, the Ministry of Defence could give up some of the allocation that was relevant to its needs 20 or 30 years ago, but is no longer necessary.
There should be a structured debate involving the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department of Trade and Industry in the reallocation of spectrum. It would then be possible to say to companies that broadcast by satellite, digital terrestrial, cable or whatever, that if they wanted to bid for a slice of the action in a particular geographical area, they would have to provide a technical solution--possibly by buying in link services such as simulcasting--to make sure that everyone in the area could receive the service.
Mr. Phil Willis (Harrogate and Knaresborough):
I also congratulate the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Dr. Turner) on securing this morning's debate. I have nearly forgiven him for the nursery voucher issue. He has certainly done some sterling work on the issue that he raises today and he is to be congratulated on bringing it to the attention of the House so forcefully. My constituents are grateful to him and to the Government for the way in which they are responding. I am sure that in her reply to the debate, the Minister will support my glowing comments about the Government and say that they have addressed many of the issues, giving my constituents cause for hope in future.
The problems in Harrogate and Knaresborough are similar to those that have been mentioned by other hon. Members. They are not quite as bad as those in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Cotter), where programmes are beamed in in Welsh. However, we do get them in Geordie, which has the same effect on many of my constituents--with apologies to the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson), who I am sure is quite fluent in that language.
We have two transmitters beaming into Harrogate and Knaresborough. One is in Bilsdale near Darlington, which is used by Tyne Tees Television and BBC Newcastle. The other is at Emley Moor near Huddersfield, which is used by Yorkshire Television and BBC Leeds. The quality of both those transmitters, which will be upgraded to digital early in the process, is absolutely excellent. Both signals can be picked up in my constituency, but there is a rub: unfortunately, people who want to watch Yorkshire Television and BBC Leeds cannot get the signal that they want; nor can those who want to watch Tyne Tees Television and BBC Newcastle. People living in the same street find it difficult to watch the station that they want.
In one block of flats in the centre of Harrogate, the bottom two floors can get BBC Newcastle and Tyne Tees Television, and the top two floors can get Yorkshire Television and BBC Leeds. The residents argue constantly and, of course, feel that their local Member of Parliament should resolve the problem by building them a transmitter. Half my constituency cannot receive signals from Emley Moor in Yorkshire and that causes a bigger problem.
Another issue that has not been raised this morning has become more prevalent lately. When people upgrade their televisions and videos they now have automatic tuning. I do not know whether other hon. Members have the same problem as I do, but since my son went to university, we are unable to change the tuning. Automatic television and video tuning picks up the best signal, but overriding it sometimes requires an engineer. Our new television apparently needs a new piece of circuitry to do that.
The question is whether all this actually matters. Harrogate and Knaresborough are synonymous with Yorkshire, as are the flowerbeds of Harrogate at Harlow Carr. It is a pity that Madam Speaker is not in the chair as only last year, she had a rose named after her in Harrogate. I commend it to hon. Members who do not have one in their gardens. Betty's Tea Rooms is also synonymous with Harrogate, as are the conference centre, the spa baths and the pump room. Knaresborough castle,
Mother Shipton's well, where hon. Members may wish to go and be petrified, and Nid gorge are all well-known Yorkshire landmarks.
Local people regard themselves as Yorkshire first and British second, and they aspire to being born and living in Yorkshire. Indeed, when my wife and I lived in Middlesbrough, we were expecting our second child and my wife rang up Yorkshire cricket club to find out whether the old boundaries of Yorkshire still applied and whether, if the baby was a boy, he would be able to play for Yorkshire. That is how strongly people feel about being from Yorkshire, about the Yorkshire region and, of course, about Yorkshire Television.
Mr. Miller:
It has not helped their cricket club.
Mr. Willis:
The hon. Gentleman refers to the finest cricket club in Great Britain, which is unbeaten this season. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has given me the opportunity to praise our excellent side--I should add that I do so as a Lancastrian.
Many of my constituents agree that there is some excellent regional broadcasting and they want more of it. I found the statistics mentioned by the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk extremely interesting. I doubt whether people want more news, but they certainly want more regional programmes. They want to identify with their region and to know what is happening there. My constituents want to know what is happening in Yorkshire, not in Newcastle and Northumberland. They want to hear Yorkshire voices, not north-eastern ones. They want to see Yorkshire settings. They want Ceefax to provide Yorkshire regional information, not north-east regional information--another problem when they receive the wrong signal. They want to see advertisements for local Yorkshire products and companies with which they can identify.
Reference has been made to the regional development agency and the greater regional identity that is now developing. I totally agree. We want to see what the local RDA is doing, not the one in the north-east, which, of course, I am not decrying. That is not to say that Tyne Tees Television and BBC Newcastle do not make excellent programmes. In fact, the BBC in Leeds and Newcastle and the two ITV companies try to cover news in my constituency. They bend over backwards to do that. They co-operate and send each other's programmes down the line. Indeed, I am sure that the complaint from the constituents of the hon. Member for Hexham is that there is far too much regional news involving Harrogate, Knaresborough and North Yorkshire in the Newcastle broadcasts. The reverse is also true.
Some of the finest regional broadcasting in Britain is in my region. In fact, the Tyne Tees regional news programme "North East Tonight" has been shortlisted for the prestigious Royal Television Society national award for the third year running. That is quite an achievement for a regional news programme. "Calendar" is another programme with exceptional viewing figures, and the BBC's regional news programmes under the "Look North" title have larger viewing figures than the national news, as the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk noted.
What can we look forward to? Frankly, very little. Analogue broadcasting has 44 broadcast frequencies in use, and all are at their limits. There is simply insufficient
room for programme duplication without causing problems for viewers in other areas. There are 11,000 relay stations assisting with signals to overcome difficult topography. Harrogate in particular suffers from the fact that large hills obscure the signals from Bilsdale to the north and from Emley Moor to the south.
New transmitters could be installed, but the cost makes that unlikely, and the ITC refuses permission for new transmitters to be built, even when companies want to do so. Yorkshire Television offered to build a repeater transmitter in the Harrogate district to receive the signal from Emley Moor and pass it on. However, the ITC rejected the idea because the problem of overload would affect reception from the Bilsdale transmitter further north.
Despite the enthusiasm of the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk, it is unlikely that digital, provided through satellite and cable, will resolve all the problems. Far too many people--including, with respect, the hon. Gentleman--believe that digital will solve all the problems of regional broadcasting.
As I mentioned in my intervention in the contribution from the hon. Member for Hexham earlier, Sky Digital has no plans to broadcast any regional programme variations, yet the pictures available to many people in the country will come from satellite broadcasting. That is a really big issue. Sky Digital has no plans to duplicate ITV programmes because of the cost factor. At present, there are 27 regional and sub-regional services--Yorkshire alone has three sub-regional services--which would require 27 responders on the satellite. Neither Rupert Murdoch nor ITV sees much hope of recovering the costs involved through advertising. Indeed, I hope that the Minister will say what the Government plan with regard to satellite broadcasting, which is crucial for all our constituents.
Digital broadcasts from the existing masts at Emley Moor and Bilsdale will certainly improve the technical quality, but there is no guarantee that all problems caused by topography will be eliminated, and it is a misapprehension to believe otherwise. Some people will still not be able to receive the programmes that they want.
Digital through cable offers perhaps the best solution. It should be possible for viewers in Harrogate and Knaresborough to have a choice of at least two regional programmes, and for quality to be guaranteed. The challenge to the Minister and to the independent broadcasting commissions is to achieve that, so that people, especially those with cable, can select their preferred regional programme. Technically, through cable, it is possible for people in my area to pick up the south-west regional programme, but it is doubtful that companies will be obliged to offer such a range of programming.
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